Thursday, June 16, 2005



FSU Meteorlogists' work may lead to better tracking of hurricanes



Scientists are continually exploring different aspects of hurricanes to increase their understanding of how they behave. Recently, two NASA-funded scientists from Florida State University analyzed ozone levels surrounding hurricanes. Their work could lead to better methods of forecasting the paths of the deadly storms.

In their study, FSU meteorologists Xiaolei Zou and Yonghui Wu found that variations of ozone levels from the surface of the ocean to the upper atmosphere are closely related to the formation, intensification and movement of a hurricane. In studying meteorological data from 12 such storms, Zou and Wu noticed that over an area of 100 miles, the area surrounding each hurricane typically had low levels of ozone from the surface to the top of the storm. Whenever the hurricane intensified, the ozone levels throughout the storm decreased even more.

In addition, when Zou and Wu examined hurricanes using the ozone data, the eye of the storms became very clear. Because forecasters always try to pinpoint the eye of the hurricane, this knowledge will help with locating a storm's exact position and possibly lead to better tracking.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Hurricane Center (NHC) is the agency that issues hurricane forecasts. Of the 12 storms analyzed, the ozone data and the NHC official report differed on the mean distance between the estimated eye by less than 18 miles during the most intense stage of the storms. When Zou and Wu added the satellite-observed ozone levels around a hurricane into a computer forecast model, the model greatly improved the predicted track that the hurricane would take...

The Tallahassee Democrat had an article today on this entitled Researchers link ozone levels storm, strength.

Some pretty pictures showing showing examples of what's being talked about can be found in NASA's feature Ozone levels drop when hurricanes are strengthening.

If the journal article were available online (via FSU's library), I would have given it a look, but it is not.  It does appear that the FSU library has the journal on dead tree, however, so I may stroll down to Dirac some time and give the article a read.  Here's the citation:

Zou, X.; Wu, Yonghui

On the relationship between Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) ozone and hurricanes

J. Geophys. Res., Vol. 110, No. D6, D06109

10.1029/2004JD005019

The $64 question is: Do we get the data frequently enough to make it an operationally useful product for NHC?  From the TOMS webpage, it would appear that the answer is no, not really.  However, given the lack of progress made in forecasting storm intensity, I think we would take anything we can get rather happily, regardless of its limitations.


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